


It Smells Like Ash

by BlueWorld



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Daryl is the King of Bad Ideas, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Improvised Backstory, M/M, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1613315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueWorld/pseuds/BlueWorld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time since his brothers rescue mission, Daryl feels the inexplicable need to pull his own weight.<br/>"I know a place," he'd said. "South of here. Isolated, easily defendable."</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Smells Like Ash

The air smells like ash and smoke and iron, tainted by the billowing clouds of black smoke rising up from the stack of burning bodies, slowly being added to. Daryl drags yet another walker by the feet – the less dangerous end, because he still can't think of it as harmless even with its brains blown out – towards the pile which has grown too high to hoist full bodies onto. Instead, Grimes waits by it with an axe in hand ready to dismember and toss bits and pieces of necrotic flesh up to the top of the flaming stack. Blackened blood and guts spill out onto the thin spread, trodden grass and Daryl has to fight the urge to be sick for the nth time since the end of the world.

They're in Georgia, far away from Atlanta but sill close enough that it's just a six hour drive to the city, in some dinky little town that they've had to clear out of walkers. After the disaster with the CDC and Jacquie, they needed a safe place to hole up for a while. For the first time since his brothers rescue mission, Daryl feels the inexplicable need to pull his own weight.

"I know a place," he'd said. "South of here. Isolated, easily defendable." That had been the end of it and Daryl tried not to be too surprised when not one person in the group protested. They packed up the cars, trucks and RV and siphoned gas from every abandoned vehicle they passed on their way and somehow made it to the town with little trouble form the living or dead.

So here he is, dragging the last walker with a gunshot through its head towards the ungodly high pile of burning bodies and trying not to think _'I knew this woman'_ because it's a small town and everyone knew each other. Her face is just barely recognizable and he only figures it out that this is Karin Westridge after he sees the gold, heart shaped necklace that his best buddy Sean gave to her for their first anniversary all those years ago before the whole world went to _hell_.

It's a small town and he should recognize more of these people, people he grew up around, interacted with, but they all must have been eaten or turned into walkers and wandered off only to be replaced with fresh rotting faces from the next town down the road.

"Think that's the last one," he grunts as he drops Karin's feet by Grimes and he sets about cutting her up. This time, though, he is sick and he brings up his lunch at the first thick, disgusting squelching sound her body makes when grimes lops off her arm.

He grew up in this town so he has the advantage when Andrea decides she thinks she's figured him out and wants to talk. He goes and stalks off with his crossbow slung over one shoulder and ducks and weaves between houses, runs across lawns until he finds his way to the water tower where he climbs the ladder and sits with his legs hanging off the platform thinking to himself what an absolute fuckin' _great_ idea it was to bring them here. Just because Andrea's sister kicked it and his brother ran off, she thinks they can relate to each other or some shit. Or she saw his face when he recognized Karin and now she thinks he really does have a heart.

He hates to break it to her, but his brother's the only person left in the world that matters to him, and for whatever reason, merle doesn’t want to be found so he's stuck waiting it out with two self-righteous sheriffs – one of which is losing his mind, don't think he hasn't noticed – a whiny bitch, an abused whiny bitch, their timid little brats, a nigger, an old guy, _Andrea_ and that Asian kid. Somehow, _somehow_ , he seems to become the one expected to do all the hunting, skinning and gutting, even though Andrea obviously has no difficulty fishing to feed a dozen in a single afternoon. There's even a lake nearby, and he knows because his Pa used to take him and merle down when they were little and Ma was alive and things weren't too bad and he'd caught fish half a meter long with hooks the size of his thumbnail. So yeah, he _really_ hates to break it to her. Maybe she could pitch in with the game and fish a bit instead of pestering Grimes to teach her to shoot moving targets.

He's resentful, he _knows_ he is, he doesn't need anyone to tell him, when he comes across the Chinese kid snooping around the area where his ranch is. He's just a door down, making his way across a row of houses all a couple hundred meters apart. Maybe the kid was just in the wrong place in the wrong time, but when Daryl sees him stepping up on his porch something in him just snaps, and the next thing he knows, Grimes, Walsh and Andrea are holding him back while the Chinese kid puts down a walker that looks so familiar, even missing its lower jaw and it's left eye.

He wants to smash it, wants to kill it, wants to put a bullet in its god damn brain because if his no good Pa went and died before Daryl got a chance to set him straight then he fucking deserves to be a god damn walker. In his blind rage he breaks free of the three holding him back and draws his knife and can't tell if he's screaming or sobbing or both as he unleashes twenty six years of pent up anger at the man who was supposed to be his father.

He shouldn’t have brought them here, should have let sleeping dragons lie, but if merle was going to come back to a place, surely it would be here? Andrea puts a hand on his shoulder, takes his knife away, whispers something hushing and soothing in his ear and Chinese kid looks like he's the first to put it all together. He's the first to pick up all the puzzle pieces Daryl's accidentally dropped and see the picture that should have been on the front of the box but was blacked out with sharpie.

"This is your home town," he says incredulously. Daryl thinks he reacts pretty well for a man that's just had a mental breakdown.

"It smells like ash," he says hollowly. He hugs his crossbow to his chest and kips in the bed of the truck that night. The next morning, as soon as dawn breaks, they move on and as his town gets smaller and smaller on the horizon, is hidden away by trees and underbrush, and Daryl feels less hysterical and more like his regular, racist, asshole, redneck self. That Korean kid keeps watching him, though, and Daryl feels something warm bloom in his chest when he catches his gaze, because he doesn’t look freaked out like Walsh or Grimes or pitying like Andrea. He just looks concerned and that makes Daryl feel warm inside.

He can't tell whether or not that's a good thing.


End file.
